Slot car racing toys are extremely popular at the present time. Such toys comprise a slotted track on which two or more electrically energized cars are guided, and which may be independently driven at controllable speeds. However, the track generally used in the prior art is usually made up of a multiplicity of interconnected track sections, and is relatively inflexible as to length and curvature. Also, the prior art track, for the most part, is subject to frequent failures at the track section junctions due to broken electrical contact, as the track sections are bent over irregular surfaces, or where the couplers between the track sections are not fully secured, or have broken off.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide an improved, simple and inexpensive track which does not require a planar roadbed; which may be readily formed to any desired length; and which may be easily set to any desired lateral curvature. The track to be described includes continuous electric conductors extending its entire length which do not have any tendency to break electrical contact as in the case with the multiple section tracks of the prior art.
Flexible track of the general type with which the present invention is concerned is known to the prior art. However, despite the claims of the proponents of the prior art flexible track, such track is actually incapable of being set to any lateral curved, circular or tortuous shape. This is because the electrical conductors embedded in the prior art flexible track, which are required to supply electrical energy to the vehicles propelled along the track, restrain and prevent any lateral curvature of the track itself.
The flexible track of the present invention, unlike the prior art track, in the preferred embodiment, incorporates elongated electric conductors which are longitudinally extensible and compressible, and which, for example, may taken the form of elongated coiled spring elements of electrically conductive resilient wire, or resilient electrically conductive material that may be compressed or extended (such as rubber-like material loaded with electrically conductive particles), or other forms to be described, so that the track assembly may be freely turned laterally to any desired curved, circular or tortuous shape.